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10th May 2017

By EMSBlog, Branding, NewsComments Off on When you don’t have £60K to spend on updating your brand identity

When you don’t have £60K to spend on updating your brand identity

Your brand identity represents you to the world, your logo will be on every piece of printed and digital material for the foreseeable future. So you will need to carefully consider who you are going to ask to handle this vitally important piece of work.

This recent brand identity update story caught my eye – mainly for the price tag. You don’t need to pay London agency prices to get London agency quality of work (or better).

The Financial Conduct Authority recently called in Saatchi & Saatchi to redesign their logo. The end result cost £66,410.

The old logo did have some issues – mainly from a reproduction point of view. Graduated wavy lines in the background and white reversed out of a darker colour is likely to be more difficult to cleanly reproduce in print.

Legibility is another problem. David Ogilvy ‘The Father of Advertising’ and Founder of Ogilvy and Mather stated in his book ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ in 1983 that white text on a dark background should be avoided, simply because it was so much harder to read.

According to Citywire Wealth Manager, in 2013 when the Financial Services Authority became the Financial Conduct Authority, nearly £200,000 was spent on the new brand identity, the new logo, brand guidelines and registering the logo.

Four years later the FCA underwent a rebrand to freshen the logo and bring it more up-to-date.

This is the new logo – cleaner, crisper with a slightly different colour, replacing a serif font with a sans-serif font, and inverting the bold slash.

It’s certainly more up-to-date. But was it worth well over £60,000 to produce? We’re not sure.

Are you considering a rebrand?

At Enterprise Marketing Solutions, we understand that the FCA’s budget is not the kind of budget most companies want to spend on a rebranding exercise.

When we take on a rebranding project the objective is to understand and capture the essence of the business and its qualities within the updated identity.

We understand the importance of iconic graphics and colour psychology that subliminally convey to your ideal customers where your business is positioned in the market.

We have done this for many clients over the years and you can see examples of our work on our portfolio page.